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What do you think the Great Filter is? (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by Cryophilia@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Personally I think it's photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.

I have no data to back that up, just a guess.

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[-] randon31415@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago

Everyone is talking about society or physiology stuff. That is just things that might get humans.

Stars going super-nova is the real great filter. Our sun is 4.6 billion years old. Life started 4 billion years ago. In 4 billion years, the sun goes supernova. We are halfway to the end of the earth.

Smaller stars last longer, but have smaller ranges that life can exist in - and planets tend to move in or out in their orbits. Bigger stars have giant habitable zones - but some large stars born when humans took their first steps are in their last decades of life. You couldn't get from the pyramids to NASA in that time, never mind the 4 billion years it took to get to humans.

[-] WhaleSnail@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

I think it's supposed to actually less than that, the sun's luminescence will increase over the next 1 billion years to the point that it will boil off the earth's oceans. No life will be able to exist past that, and earth will just be a barren rock in orbit for the next 3 billion years.

[-] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 5 points 5 months ago

Well I'm doing my part to make sure the oceans are full of Arctic ice for the great boil off

[-] Subverb@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

When they do boil off they need to make sure to have a hell of a lot of cocktail sauce and melted butter on hand.

[-] creditCrazy@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

While that is true I would counter point that humans have a bit of a handicap as earth got hit by a big astroid that killed just about everything on it making terran life have to start all over again but at the other hand I saw someone else on here mentioned that oil has given us a head start at space ferrang advancement and oil is made from dead life so granted I haven't done much reacerch on how oil forms naturally but I do wonder if we would have oil if earth never got blown up but on top of all that there are theorys that mars used to have life so if astroids haven't interfered with our solar system intelligent life may have formed faster and maybe twice also there used to be multiple species of humans in the past so maybe 4 or five times in the same solar system

[-] Pulptastic@midwest.social 2 points 5 months ago

That is an interesting idea that is not typically considered in the drake equation as far as I know. That could significantly reduce the chance of finding intelligent life elsewhere.

[-] oo1 2 points 5 months ago

I think it is in the drake equation effectively, it factors into the length of time that the civilization might send and receive detectable signals - It doesn't say why the Civilisation might collapse, but the planet becoming uninhabitable is surely one reason. On wikipedia for Drake Equation the Carl Sagan specification of L is in terms of the "fraction of planetary lifetime".

I think a missing factor might be how directional transmission and receiving is, if we can't broadcast to and listen to the whole sky equally then we might have a 1/r-cubed type issue with the chances of both listening and transmitting with enough strength/energy at the same time.

this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024

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